How to create a sunset painting

Posted on:Aug10

We're very excited to announce that Holly Aitchison of IG: @artycraftylove is taking over our blog today! At just 15 years old, this artist has already been steadily producing an impressive body of work. From photorealistic portraits to breathtaking landscape paintings, sometimes it's baffling to imagine how she does it all at such a young age.

Luckily, she'll be sharing some of her secrets here with us by teaching us how to paint one of her sunset pieces! Read on below to learn more about this incredible talent and her work! Take it away, Holly!

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Hi! I'm Holly Aitchison, more known as @artycraftylove on Instagram, and I’m a 15-year-old artist from Scotland. I've always been creative and loved art since I was really young, and have more recently started taking it seriously. While I love experimenting with new styles and mediums, I mostly do watercolor landscape paintings or realistic portraits drawn with colored pencil. I'm quite often asked how I create my watercolor paintings, and so, here is a little video and a few tips to help!

CHECK OUT THE VIDEO BELOW:

MATERIALS

HOW TO CREATE A SUNSET PAINTING:

STEP 1

For my sunset paintings, I like to lay down a background color first and then work the detail on top after. So I took the largest brush from the Craftamo Air Edition collection, the flat rounded brush (10), and washed the main colors over my paper.

I go over this a few times until I am happy with the color, making sure there are no streaks.

STEP 2

While the paper was still wet from the background, I took a slightly smaller flat brush (6, 4) and painted the clouds. I like using the wet-on-wet technique for clouds as it makes them look more fluffy. After this had dried, I went in with a small round brush (2) to darken some areas and add detail.

STEP 3

I then took a large round brush (7) and painted the trunks of the palm trees. I like using this brush as it allows me to do larger areas, but also has a sharp point to do tiny details.

STEP 4

Using the same brush as before, I add the leaves of the palm trees. To do this, I apply very little pressure on my brush, and let it go in whatever direction it wants to go.

And, there you have it! I hope you enjoyed the tutorial!

CHECK OUT THE FINISHED PIECE BELOW:

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Have a question about this process? Comment below and we'll do our best to answer you!